He impressed me as one of the most remarkable men I have ever met.
Having finished the number of test flights required by the French syndicate, Wilbur began training the first of three French aviators, as was also required. He was Comte Charles de Lambert, a slim, blond-haired Russian-born aristocrat, age forty-three, who spoke English and to whom Wilbur took an immediate liking. With the plane fitted out with a second set of levers, he would ride to Wilbur’s right. For his part Wilbur would sit with his hands between his knees, ready if necessary to take control.
Never had it been more important that Wilbur perform to perfection, for any mishap now, coming after Orville’s crash, would be seen in a very different light, and so, as much as he was enjoying himself, the pressure on him was greater than ever. Only by escaping out into the countryside on his bicycle could he have time to himself. “How I long for Kitty Hawk!” he wrote to Octave Chanute.
In his honor the Aéro-Club de France was planning its biggest banquet ever at which Wilbur was to receive the club’s Gold Medal and a prize of 5,000 francs ($1,000) and in addition a gold medal from the Académie des Sports. “I will have quite a collection of bric-a-brac by the time I return home,” he wrote to brother Reuchlin. What he valued still more, he said, was the friendship of so many of the good people of Le Mans.
When he had arrived a few months earlier he had known no one. Now he counted some of his warmest friends among those he had come to know. It seemed all the children within a dozen-mile radius would greet him as he rode by on his bicycle. They would politely take off their caps and smile and say, “Bonjour! Monsieur Wright.”
“They are really almost the only ones except close friends who know how to pronounce my name,” he told Reuchlin. “People in general pronounce my name, ‘Vreecht’ with a terrible rattle of the ‘r.’ In many places I am called by my first name, ‘Veelbare’ almost entirely.”
The Aéro-Club de France’s banquet took place in Paris the evening of November 5, 1908, in the salle de théatre of the Automobile Club on the Place de la Concorde. As reported, the “brilliantly illuminated” room had been “transformed” by plants and flowers “in profusion.” The 250 guests, nearly all men in full dress, included almost every major figure in French aviation—Léon Delagrange, Louis Blériot, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Ernest Archdeacon—in addition to Léon Bollée, Hart Berg, and Comte Charles de Lambert. Conspicuous, too, was the great structural engineer Gustave Eiffel. Among the few women present was Edith Berg.
A military band provided appropriately rousing music and, as the guests read in the menus at each of their places, the evening’s sumptuous feast included jambon d’York aux épinards (ham with spinach), faisan r?ti aux croutons (roasted pheasant with croutons), salade Russe (Russian potato salad), and Glace a lananas (pineapple ice cream).
All was quite befitting the occasion—as a statement of national pride and the elegant taste of the time, and as recognition of an infinitely promising turning point in history.
In presenting the Gold Medal, the president of the Aéro-Club, M. L. P. Cailletet, spoke of the great change in public opinion that had swept over France and the world in general since Wilbur Wright began his performance at Le Mans. He spoke of how Wilbur and his brother had endured a period of ridicule and abuse such as had seldom been known in the history of scientific investigation. France, he said, was now at last showing its appreciation of their merit.
Wilbur received a sustained ovation, and Louis Barthou, minister of public works, delivered a “hearty speech of congratulation,” lauding Wilbur and Orville for achieving “through straightforwardness, intelligence, and tenacity . . . one of the most beautiful inventions of the human genius.
Mr. Wright is a man who has never been discouraged even in the face of hesitation and suspicion. The brothers Wright have written their names in human history as inventors of pronounced genius.
Photographs were taken. Then Wilbur rose from his place at the center of the head table. Baron d’Estournelles de Constant translated as Wilbur spoke.